The courtiers and court gossip mongers who secretly wish we could get rid of that no aristocracy part of the constitution so they can fulfill their deepest fantasies of being sycophantic fluffers of kings and dukes.

Which, if that is your fantasy, more power to you, I just hope you haven’t chosen political journalism as your career.

She’s the daughter of a former President and a former Secretary of State who is the potential next POTUS, as such, she’s a minor public figure and this obviously then is mildly newsworthy. The real question is why does it piss you off that anybody else might be interested in this?

@semperfi123: Look, darling, I know you are a low-rent troll, but could you at least peruse the blog before commenting? I am sure you aren’t paid much, damn it, couldn’t you at least try to be professional?

How long before Newsmax accuses Bill of being the father? You know that right now they’re having a staff meeting discussing whether that would be too far over the line.

Naah, the only “line” I’m sure they’re thinking of is which clickbait-worthy figures in the news they can float as the “real father” of Chelsea’s baby. Or how many of them they can get into one article. For some reason I think they’ll start with Vladimir Putin…. or Elvis

@Cervantes: And forego the chance to get all those welfare bennies and an anchor baby of his very own? Is possible though, he might feel in need of amusement, recreation and a little me me me time one day, that is how it always works, no?

How long before Newsmax accuses Bill of being the father? You know that right now they’re having a staff meeting discussing whether that would be too far over the line.

@🌷 Martin: Shit, great minds think alike. You KNOW that’s coming. I bet they can’t hold off until tomorrow morning with that particular accusation, and what will come after will make it look downright polite and respectful by comparison.

Does not bother me this is in the news, and hope they are all healthy and happy..

Since someone brought up the IRS, is there any sane reporting on the shocking news that Lerner emailed the Justice department when worried that some groups were breaking the law? I am curious as to whether this was proper procedure or not, in short, is there even a homeopathic dose of wrongdoing here. Per Memeorandum this is only being reported on by wingnuts, and they yell scandal without doing the most basic level of research, of course.

“Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold wants Congress to halt Attorney General Eric Holder‘s paycheck as long as he remains in contempt of Congress. He told Greta Van Susteren Thursday night that it could help hold people like Holder to account, explaining, “If you’re in contempt of Congress, we don’t pay you.”

Sheikh Azzam Tamimi, head of the Waqf, the Islamic authority that manages the site, said worshippers had barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque “to defend” the site from Jewish groups. Israeli TV stations showed footage of police running across the compound in riot gear with piles of stones strewn on the ground. The entrance to a mosque was barricaded with furniture, as protesters inside threw objects toward police. Tamimi said 30 people suffered from tear gas inhalation or had been struck by rubber-coated bullets. None of the injuries appeared to be serious.

in other news not covered by the Times or by the Post

On 9 March 2012, al-Qaisi was killed in a missile strike by IDF aircraft, while driving his Opel car in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood west of Gaza. His son-in-law, Mohammed Ahmed al-Hanani, a resident of Beit Furik near Nablus,[7] was also killed in the attack, and a third man was seriously injured. The killing of Hanini was, according to the Egyptian ambassador to Ramallah Yasser Osman[8] and a Hamas spokesman, in violation of the terms of agreement in the Shalit prisoner swap.[9] The government and the Israeli security establishment justified the targeted assassination by claiming at the time that al-Qaisi had been planning a terrorist attack against Israel that was in the final stages of preparation. Sources among the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza say that they had been tipped off a month earlier that Israel was planning to kill him.[10]

As Chelsea is a member of one of the ruling dynasties in oligarchy America, it matters a lot. Chelsea is one of our next presidents, and so is her unborn foetus.

America in the 21st century had rigidified social mobility to the point where political power, like wealth, is now primarily inherited. This makes it a matter of great concern to know whether Chelsea’s wee little bairn turns out to be another Caligula, or not.

In oligarchy America, our rulers comes from a very small gene pool. We’d like to know what’s going on in that gene pool so that we can prepare ourselves, for example, to deal with a president who may appoint a horse a senator.

I think it’s fair to say that diplomacy today requires much more of that if you’re the United States of America than it did 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. I’ve had wonderful discussions with a lot of my predecessors. I kid my good friend, Henry Kissinger. Can you imagine, in a world of Twitter, being able to sneak out of Pakistan and fly to China and do secret negotiations? It’s just an entirely different 24/7 public environment that you are living in. And even if you’re of a lower profile than I am, everyone around you has the technology now to report a sighting, to overhear a conversation, to snap a photo. It is an incredibly complex set of conditions that you now have to operate in at the highest levels of diplomacy anywhere.

MRS CLINTON: Well, it’s a new world, and we all have to figure out how best to adjust to it. But take the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement. I’ve had intense conversations with Egyptian leaders and Israeli leaders. They are both committed to maintaining it because it happens to be in both of their interests. It’s clearly in the interest of regional stability.

Part of our challenge now is to get to know the new Egyptian civilian leadership. There’s no substitute for good old-fashioned shoe leather. It’s ironic, in a way, that we live in this cyber virtual reality. It’s almost as though people demand to see more of you than they did before because they want to make sure you’re not taking them for granted, that you really will listen to them, that you’ll see things from their perspective. So we’ve invested a lot in beginning to build relationships.

We’re not going to agree on everything; there’s no doubt about that. But we think it is important to have the opportunity to make the case about why this peace agreement is as much in Egypt’s interests as it is in Israel’s or the United States’s. If you look at what’s happening in so much of the Middle East and North Africa, there are different assessments that can be made. Egypt had free, fair elections. A year ago, nobody would have thought that was possible. They’re actually starting to do politics, which is messy, like sausage being made, and is never going to be a totally satisfactory experience for the people in it or out of it.

don’t worry, OO, I am sure the Times and the Post will both get around to reporting on the riotous shooting opf the rubber bullets and the hospitalizations currently occuring on the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount as soon as the South African Free and Fair Police Forces get the situation under control.

Clinton/Kiss: al-Sisi is our kind of guy. his upcoming election will be nothing if not free and fair, like Morsi’s before him, and Murabak’s before him. those Egyptians, they sure know how to conduct Free and Fair elections.

This message brought to you by the Committee to Buy Omes Omnibus a Chromebook

Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Thanks for giving us examples from times 50 and 60 and 80 years past. Pro tip: the distribution of wealth and of political power in American society has changed since then.

@some guy: You can abbreviate the Esquire. It should, however, be set off by commas.

Really, in this instance, I am not arguing with the substance of your comments. I can’t. You, as a rule, don’t provide any links to your sources. Absent that, It is rather difficult to determine whether you were factually accurate or not – or to determine if your interpretation of the facts is one with which I night agree or disagree.

( this message brought to you by the Committee to Buy Omnes Omnibus a Chromebook)

Police closed the Temple Mount to Jewish visitors and tourists on Thursday as a precaution against a repeat of violent clashes at the site the day before.

On Wednesday, riots broke out on the Temple Mount compound, as Palestinians protested a visit to the holy site by Jewish pilgrims and tourists.

Dozens of Palestinian protesters and an Israeli policeman were wounded during clashes, the second such incident in a week.

Police arrested six Palestinians overnight in connection with the riots.

Police said they responded with stun grenades after Palestinians threw “stones and firecrackers” when the walled compound’s gates were opened. A small number of Jewish visitors had toured the site before the violence began.

Riots on the Temple Mount are not uncommon, and often accompany political tension or visits by Israeli right-wing activists.

Israeli security officials told Channel 2 news Wednesday that they would ultimately have to force their way into the al-Aqsa mosque, atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, because hundreds of young Palestinian men are now routinely stockpiling large quantities of rocks and slabs of stone there to attack security forces.

Sheikh Azzam Tamimi, head of the Waqf, the Muslim trust that administers the site, said worshipers had barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa mosque “to defend” the site from Jewish groups. Israeli TV stations showed footage of police running across the compound in riot gear with piles of stones strewn on the ground. The entrance to the mosque was barricaded with furniture, as protesters inside threw objects at police. Tamimi said 30 people suffered from tear-gas inhalation or had been struck by rubber-coated bullets. None of the injuries appeared to be serious.

[King Playstations minions weigh in] Jordan on Wednesday urged the UN Security Council to end Israeli “escalation” at the compound. “Legal, humanitarian and ethical duties of the UN Security Council and the international community require that they stop Israeli escalation and violations committed by Jewish radicals at al-Aqsa,” Information Minister Mohammad Momani told the state-run Petra news agency. “Such actions as well as Israel’s insistence on supporting radical groups provoke Muslims around the world, create more instability in the region and violate international laws.”

If he’d actually taken the opportunity to ask a tough question of Putin when he actually had the opportunity, instead of trying to make it look like that’s what he did after the fact, that would’ve been significantly more impressive.

God, you want to talk about ass kissing, read those comments. No wonder Ed and Glenn think so highly of themselves. Yeesh.

Nobody. But by all means Cole, don’t keep us waiting a moment longer for the latest late night thousand word stream of consciousness post about the minutest ramblings of your mind. Everybody cares about that.

A new ABC/American Armpit poll show Zygote Clinton with a commanding lead in to 2056 Democratic Presidential race!

In a related story head of America’s Cross Whores, Karl Rove says his group is readying ads that will expose Zygote to the American voter as a freeloading parasite whose grandfather once had illicit sex while in the Oval Office.

A new ABC/American Armpit poll show Zygote Clinton with a commanding lead in to 2056 Democratic Presidential race!

In a related story head of America’s Cross Whores, Karl Rove says his group is readying ads that will expose Zygote to the American voter as a freeloading parasite whose grandfather once had illicit sex while in the Oval Office.

To be fair, it’s not just politicians and/or their offspring. How many frigging stories have I seen about the immaculate conception of North West? How many stories are being published today about the occupancy or emptiness of Jennifer Anniston’s womb? Please. Women give birth to babies/get pregnant every frigging day; it’s not really news. I begin to believe that it’s all an elaborate way of distracting the common folk from the real problems facing this country. Panem et circi, anyone? Anyone?? Bueller???